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Review of Scientific Instruments

A polarization converting device for an interfering enhanced CPT atomic clock

Kewei Wang, Yuan Tian, Yi Yin, Yuanchao Wang, Sihong Gu

Published Nov 1, 2017• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

With interfering enhanced coherent population trapping (CPT) signals, a CPT atomic clock with improved frequency stability performance can be realized. We explore an optical device that converts single-polarized bichromatic light to left and right circularly polarized superposed bichromatic light to generate interfering enhanced CPT resonance with atoms. We have experimentally studied a tabletop CPT atomic clock apparatus with a microfabricated 87Rb atomic chip-scale cell, and the study results show that it is promising to realize a compact CPT atomic clock, even a chip-scale CPT atomic clock through microfabrication, with improved frequency stability performance.

DOI
10.1063/1.4998486

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Acta Physica Sinica•Jan 1, 2012•5 citations
With interfering enhanced coherent population trapping (CPT) signals, a CPT atomic clock with improved frequency stability performance can be realized. We explore an optical device that converts single-polarized bichromatic light to left and right circularly polarized superposed bichromatic light to generate interfering enhanced CPT resonance with atoms. We have experimentally studied a tabletop CPT atomic clock apparatus with a microfabricated 87Rb atomic chip-scale cell, and the study results show that it is promising to realize a compact CPT atomic clock, even a chip-scale CPT atomic clock through microfabrication, with improved frequency stability performance.
Traditional coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clocks use single circularly polarized coherent multichromatic light to interact with atoms for preparing CPT dark states. While this configuration is simple, it suffers from the trap states and involves only the ±1st-order sidebands in the CPT resonance, excluding the carrier and other sidebands. This results in a lower CPT signal amplitude and higher laser noise, limiting the frequency stability of CPT atomic clocks. To address this issue, we developed and experimentally validated a scheme utilizing left- and right-circularly polarized light based on multiple coherent superpositions. This scheme significantly enhances the amplitude of the CPT resonance. Furthermore, by incorporating a Michelson interferometer, the polarization direction of the ±1st-order sidebands in the coherent multichromatic light is adjusted from parallel to perpendicular, enabling the filtering of one sideband to be detected while eliminating other unwanted sidebands and effectively suppressing laser noise. The results show that, under identical conditions, the short-term frequency stability of this method is theoretically improved by a factor of seven compared to the traditional circularly polarized light scheme, providing an effective pathway for the development of high-performance CPT atomic clocks.
We have developed and experimentally studied a coherent population trapping (CPT) state preparation scheme for atomic clock application with co-propagating left and right circularly polarized lasers. With realization of constructive interference and spin-polarized dark state free in CPT state preparation, we have obtained CPT resonance signal 3 times larger than that of the conventional scheme used in atomic clock. Polarization fluctuations and CPT signal sensitivity to laser power behaviors are both improved with the scheme. Our study reveals that it is a promising candidate for both normal-size and chip-scale CPT atomic clocks.
A scheme is investigated for a coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clock, wherein the polarization of a beam produced by a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser is converted to an elliptically polarized beam that interacts with alkali atoms, where the CPT signal is extracted by differentially detecting the magneto-optically rotated light within the transmitted beam. The scheme eliminates the spin-polarized trap state of the atoms and the unwanted background signal, and suppresses in the CPT signal the noise converted from the laser noise. This result reveals the promise of this scheme for realizing a compact CPT atomic clock possessing a significantly improved frequency stability compared to current compact CPT atomic clock devices, coupled with similar power consumption, volume, and cost therewith.
This scheme is based on a Michelson interferometer in which the relative optical path difference between the two arms is adjusted to control the relative phase between the copropagating left- and right-handed ( σ + - σ − ) circularly polarized light. This configuration converts the dominant ±1 st sidebands from parallel to orthogonal linear polarizations, while the 0 th sideband becomes circularly polarized light. The ±1 st sidebands, forming a double-Λ configuration, interact with 87 Rb atoms to generate an interference-enhanced coherent population trapping (CPT) resonance. A partial reflector placed behind the vapor cell enables multiple interactions between the σ + - σ − circularly polarized light and the atoms. After the polarizer, only the +1 st sideband resonance is detected; the −1 st sideband is completely suppressed, and the 0 th sideband is partially attenuated, thereby reducing the light background. Under the same conditions, the multi-pass configuration improves the CPT contrast fourfold and reduces noise by roughly half an order of magnitude compared with the single-pass case. With only a few additional optical components, this scheme improves both contrast and noise, positioning it as a promising candidate for high-performance CPT atomic clocks.
Abstract The coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clock is very promising for use in next-generation spaceborne applications owing to its compactness and high performance. In this paper, we propose and implement a CPT atomic clock based on the direct modulation of a large-modulation-bandwidth and narrow-linewidth distributed Bragg reflector laser, which replaces the usually used external bulk modulator in high-performance CPT clocks. Our method retains the high performance while significantly reducing the clock size. Using this highly compact bichromatic light source and simplest CPT configuration, in which a circularly polarized bichromatic laser interrogates the 87 Rb atom system, a CPT signal of clock transition with a narrow linewidth and high contrast is observed. We then lock the local oscillator frequency to the CPT resonance and demonstrate an encouraging short-term frequency stability of 3.6 × 10 −13 τ −1/2 (4 s ⩽ τ ⩽ 200 s). We attribute it to the ultralow laser frequency and intensity noise as well as to the high-quality-factor CPT signal. This study can pave the way for the development of compact high-performance CPT clocks based on our scheme.
Coherent population trapping (CPT) atomic clocks are prevailingly realized by exciting CPT resonance with circularly polarized bichromatic coherent light (σ+-σ+ scheme), while atom utilization efficiency is relatively low in the scheme. For improving efficiency, we experimentally study the scheme of realizing CPT resonance through the interaction between atoms and parallel linearly polarized bichromatic coherent light field (lin//lin scheme). In the same experimental conditions the experimental results show that the signal-noise ratio of the CPT resonance signal is twice, and the differential slope is 1.65 time higher than those of σ+-σ+ scheme. The experimental results reveal that the scheme is an ideal candidate for low power consuming atomic clock and magnetometer.